The momentum is building

All the hard work we’ve done in previous months started to pay off in February. The momentum in our business is building and it’s now driving Yellowfin forward into the next financial year.

Our marketing efforts are reaping rewards

Our marketing is now having a real impact and delivering the results that the business needs. Over the past six months we’ve doubled our average daily inbound leads and the quality of those leads is also improving. This has been reflected in the size of the deals that are being brought to us, an increase that is now also filtering through to our sales figures.

Marketing has also kept the funnel growing by participating in a lot of events. In the US, we were at the SaaSTR Annual. I believe we were the only Australian vendor there, so it was a good opportunity for us to meet like-minded people and grow our business.

We’ve also been involved in several successful events in Japan – at one we did more than 150 demos in a single day! Last week we attended the Gartner summit in Sydney and we were also at the Chief Data and Analytics Officer event in the UK.

Deal size is growing as enterprise sales accelerate

We are also building bottom line momentum which is a great achievement. There’s a few drivers here:

Our average deal size is growing – Tableau averages approximately $7,000 per customer while ours is almost four times that (and growing).

Our sales cycle is shrinking.

We have built substantial momentum in the enterprise space.

We’re still strong on the small deals, but our growth at the top-end of town continues to accelerate. The number of deals over $100,000 is growing month-on-month and it’s a significant driver of business growth – four-core server deals are now the norm not the exception.

A good example of this is a deal we won with a fleet management company in Asia Pacific this month. They own the entire fleet management process, from procuring vehicles to managing and servicing them and then reselling them at the end of their lease. This company wanted to build out an application that they can take to all of their customers in Australia and globally. Our ability to execute on this deal, with all its complexity, is a testament to the capability we have built at Yellowfin.

We’re ramping up for the next financial year

From a strategic perspective, we’ve spent much of February planning out the next year – thinking about what we’re doing, where we’re heading, and what we need to get there. Our financial year ends in June and our sales for the year are now essentially locked and loaded. I’m confident that we’ll hit budget so we are now starting to look forward to the 2018/19 year. Personally, I’m focused on making sure we make the most of the momentum that we’ve built throughout the business. There are exciting times ahead!